Epeiros

[Cyrus]

It must be just me (since i keep seeing screens of people succeding) but i can't seem to get past the first 5 years when using epeiros. I take pella and occasionaly thessalia, but can never seem to kill the romans or even emigrate the army of taras into greece......
It's a shame, 'cause they seem like a very interesting faction, especially due to havin indian elephants in europe, so i was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on this.
thx in advance

[A Very Super Market]

What tactics are you using?

You can forget about Taras, at least for a while.

[Cyrus]

Well i never fought any feild battles, just seiges, and i usually send in my elephants, ram the gates while archers\slingers\skirmishers distract the enemy.
But why should i give up taras?

[A Very Super Market]

Didn't you say you wanted to abandon Taras?

Never mind, but why are you losing?

[Cyrus]

No, i said i can never do anything with it.
But usuallly it's because of 3 factors: rome,elephant upkeep and maks. everytime i take demetrias they have this fullstack thats coming right at me.
How do yall usually play?

[A Very Super Market]

Okay, my point about Taras is.

The Romans won't invade you anytime soon, except in Taras. Forget about it. The Maks threaten your capital.

Try and ally with KH, to divert some maks, but I think your elephants can deal with them.

[Sygrod]

To answer the first post.

I have had no problem with the early years. I use the elephants as battering rams and open doors, then as archer platforms against non-missile units. I also discard quite a few units initially and recruit as many slingers as I can queue up before I run out of initial funds. 3 or 4 slinger units can hold Taras against any roman army, as long as you use other tricks and techniques to lure them close to towers and mop up with the cavalry unit there. They are also used to good effect against the Makedonians as you steamroll them. Keep your field army in Hellas as strong as possible and use phalanxes as mobile walls with slingers behind and some cavalry and possibly elephants to mop up. In the beginning, use defense and whittle your enemies down.

I advice against giving up ANY territory. Hold Taras in the beginning and go after the Maks with a vengeance. Kick them out of Hellas altogether. They can sit and stew in Ionia. As you do this, the Koinon will join up against you. Use your main army to wipe them out in Hellas as well. Attack a city with few defenders and use the elephants to assault right away. Take it and wait for the enemy to attack you. Sally and drive them off. Aim to kill their expensive and good units first. The slingers are good at that. Kill FMs as much as possible to deny them "free" cavalry and bonuses. Once you are in control of Hellas, you can send the elephants and some better units over to Taras and go after the Romans. Once you are in control of several Mak and Koinon cities in Hellas your finances should improve. recruit as many slinger units as possible. They are good at mowing down roman armies.

[Cyrus]

Well i followed your advice and now i control pella,demetrias,corinth and taras (plus my original epirote settlement) the maks where destroyed as i killed theyr last FM in corinth, although they still had the 2 islands.Anywho the greeks beseiged corinth two turns after i took it so i'm now beseiging athens. Once i ve taken all greece, what do yall suggest i do? should i just defend taras or go into italy; or go into Getia?

[bobbin]

You might want to have bit of a rest and build up your economy but if not I'd suggest expanding up to the danube as this gives you an easily defendable border with the getai who most likley won't attack you for a while, you could go into getai proper for their mines but recruitment options there are awful so i tend to leave it until later.
Also capture southern italy and sicily as this will give you an excellent base to invade the rest of the western mediterranean, you'll probably need two armies for this as the romans will always be sending stacks your way.

A nice map of my suggestions.


This also makes a very nice european empire as your entire land border is defendable from river crossing.

[Decimus]

You could use your elephants to take over most of Greece, and then replace them with some Phalanx/Hoplites.

[Tiberius Claudius Marcellus]

My tactic for winning with Epiros on H/M was to merge all the field armies in northern Greece and assault Pella - you should attack first turn since your elephants can break the walls. Keep your elephants alive, since you can take several cities this way. Leave Pyrrhus' son as the governor of the city and continue smashing mak armies with what's left of your stack. Again, elephants will beat down stupid palisade walls w/ ease and crush any armies out in open battle.

As for Taras, do NOT abandon the town. Use your fleet to transfer all units (except for 1 garrison each) from Ambrakia and Epidamnos over to the Italian side and either get them inside Taras or hammer/anvil the Roman army led by Scipio and crush them. You will have to fight a battle of attrition with Rome for a bit; but once the Maks have been rendered impotent and you will have had time to build up Taras' MIC's you will be able to win as long as you don't have any Pyrrhic victories.

As far as middle game play, I spam Phalangitai Deuteroi and Toxotai. Full stacks of those (usually 15 infantry, 4 archers, and 1 FM) are more than enough to annihilate any and all opposition. When necessary, send two armies and allow the AI to control your reinforcements. You will suffer higher casualties than if you played them yourself; but by zerging the enemy AI you can't lose unless you are incompetent.

My western border provinces in Northern Italia and Southern Gaul are always Type IV governments so that I can raise full stacks of native, easily-replenishable troops to defend against the unceasing Lusotannan/Arverni/Aedui/Sweboz assaults. I never bothered razing all of their cities to prevent them from attacking because I despise fighting in the cold, forrested north. Tree battle ambushes are ridiculous to fight with my computer specs.

Phalangitai Deuteroi carried me all the way to Babylon; but when I had millions and millions of Mnai, I would spam a stack or two of ultra elites. I even fielded a 20 unit stack elephants just to be ridiculous. They completely slaughtered 5 full stack Ptolie armies (separately, of course) within about 10 seconds of the beasts hitting the enemy lines. But, I had to kill them off because they were a massive drain on my treasury.

As you grind away at the AS, send a couple stacks down the Nile and raze every single Ptolie city there is. Destroy any and all monuments, wonders, and buildings that you can for the money and to make them impotent. Then lower the taxes to low and abandon it. The city will rebel back to the Ptolies; but will revolt from them when they are unhappy about no structures, insufficient troops, and taxes higher than "zero". Do this once every 10 years (or whenever they start spamming full stacks at you again) and you will have smoothe sailing.

[Slaists]

It must be just me (since i keep seeing screens of people succeding) but i can't seem to get past the first 5 years when using epeiros. I take pella and occasionaly thessalia, but can never seem to kill the romans or even emigrate the army of taras into greece......
It's a shame, 'cause they seem like a very interesting faction, especially due to havin indian elephants in europe, so i was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on this.
thx in advance

Over the last few days I have played a couple decades of Epyros: a very fun campaign (at least at the beginning). Here are a few thoughts from my campaign:


TURN 1

1. In the first few years: forget about positive cash... The treasury WILL be in red.

2. Given #1 I realized I should use my starting cash to hire extra units on the first turn: since I wouldn't be able to do so until getting out of the negative cash flow problem.

3. Given #1: I disbanded my starting fleet sparing one vessel for transporting troops. In the first turn, I placed that ship in the most advantageous position to transport my coastal troops into Southern Italy. I do not remember if I succeed to transport them over in the first turn or the second.

3. One needs to be brutally efficient with Epyros. But then again: one CAN be brutally efficient thanks to Pyrrhos and his elephants. The task for the first turn: take Pella. Elephants can knock the gates down and soften the residing general after Pyrrhos with his cavalry have taken care of the Macedonian acondistas and slingers (dangerous for the ellies). After that: I enslaved the treaturous Macedonian scum! On the same turn, I queued up an hoplite unit in Pella and moved Pyrrhos' army (everybody) towards Dimitris as far as his remaining moving points allowed. I moved the other Epyros' army (cavalry + general) as close as possible to Pyrrhos.

TURN 2

4. Macedonians attacked Pyrrhos near the beach. Thanks to elephants adn Pyrrhos' own body guard unit the Macedonian army was destroyed... Dimitris fell and was speedily enslaved on the same turn. Any remaining cash after erasing the treasury debt was used to hire extra units. I used my diplomat to ask Macedonians for a ceasefire and trade rights. Since they're busy with the Greek Alliance, they agreed. After taking care of business in Dimitris Pyrrhos merged with the cavalry army and moved due West.

5. By this time, the Romans were besieging Taras. My sea-born army from across the straights attacked the Romans from the rear and duly destroyed them in a pitched (the Roman army has triarii units in it) battle. (It could have happened on the third turn though: I do not remember clearly anymore).

6. The ship moved back across the straights to pick up Pyrrhos and his army.

TURN 3, 4, etc.

7. Pyrrhos crossed the straights and moved up the Italian coast, becoming filthy rich enslaving Romans and establishing petty client kingdoms (fastest and cheapest occupation governments) one after another... The world was his oyster from that point on...

MANY TURNS LATER (around 240 BC)

Pyrrhos is pushing 80 but all of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica + Segestia is his... By this time, the Greek alliance has destroyed remaining Macedonians and are eyeing Epyros' Greece possessions. Time to return home...

[Gourmet]

Ahhhhh ... it is good to see capable Greek Emperors bring their upstart ambitions to the ancient world. I wish to add to this mix of victorious Greek banter with my own tales of heroic Epeirote conquests. Dine yourselves on as much bread and drink as you like and carefully observe the exploits of Emperor Gourmet.



This is the extent to which the Aiakides family has expanded and even now, the Greeks march to secure the Mediterranean. Soon, we Aiakides will follow in Alexander's footsteps enslave the petty Seleukians and Ptolemaioi that inhabit Alexander's rightful empire ...

[Rilder]

If it was me playing that save it would of took at least 50-75 years to get that large. :p

[antisocialmunky]

It took 48 years.

[zig_zac]

Hello. I am quite new to this game, but just started to play Epeiros on VH/M. Must say, what many others say - there's no need to abandon Taras. I left upon the walls of Pella just enough troops to take it, which is simple, as there's no phallanx there. Elephants an most of army went from the beginning to Italy, and Pyrrhos just after taking Pella. I didn't take Demetrias, or go further to mainland Greece, as I would have to fight against KH and Makedonia. Now they take care of each other nicely. And elephants just plow through fearful Roman infantry, which allows to take one settlement from Romans every turn or two. Also it's good to build phallanx with starting money, as simple phallangitai deuteroi can stop elite roman troops.
I've now only two elephants, as they finally run amok thumping some consular cavalry, but it saved the day in battle, and I took Roma next turn - winter 271.

I actually regret I've lost my elephants, as I have some profit (edited: I wrote here 9500 minai, which was just because of heavy demolishing after taking Roma) and 13000 in treasury. I can afford them for sure.

But one thing worries me - namely lousy forms of government Epeiros has (baring the first form). I even think of building a lot of allied city - form 4. Which one do you build in Italy (or elsewhere on subjugation resource?)